Back in 2009, an idea was brewing concerning a problem I was facing as a drug discovery scientist at a global pharmaceutical company. The problem was how to discover new pain therapeutics that hit ion channel targets with greater potency and specificity. Chemists have struggled for years to try to improve this but with few successes, particularly in treating pain but also for other diseases. However, I knew that several tarantulas have venoms evolved for killing prey and defending against predators that happen to act specifically at these pain targets. Using venoms as drugs is not novel; in fact there are 15 drugs on the market already that owe their discovery to venoms. But sourcing venoms, especially in a usable form, was very difficult.
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